Which questions are not answered?

Answer

It is important to distinguish between two possibilities:

Option 1: An answer may be possible to a question asked, but not necessarily in all circumstances.

Option 2: In principle, no answer is possible to a question asked because it is logically impossible.

Example of possibility 1. Suppose someone asks you “Have you stopped drinking?”. If you answer yes, you confirm that you have been drinking, but not anymore. If you answer no, you confirm that you have been drinking and that you are still drinking. So, either way, if you answer, you’ve confirmed that you’ve been drinking. Such a statement is called a presupposition of the question. Now if you’re someone who’s never drunk, you can’t answer the question and you have to say “Sorry, but I can’t answer this”. In this sense, there are indeed questions that, depending on the circumstances, cannot be answered.

Example of option 2. Suppose someone asks “Can you answer this question with “no”?”. If you say yes, you should have said no, but if you say no, you should have said yes. This is a contradiction, so this question can never be answered. It should be noted here that not all questions that say something about themselves must necessarily cause problems. When asked “Is this a question?” you can answer “yes” without problem.

Finally, the question of the meaning of life has more to do with the first possibility because the problem is that few people who ask the question have an idea of ​​what kind of answer would satisfy them. In other words, it is a question whose presuppositions are not sufficiently clear. If someone asks “Why are we here?” and I answer “Because if we weren’t here we would be somewhere else”, I can imagine many will say that this is not the answer they expect. If you ask what they do expect, there is rarely a good answer to this question.